Tubes By Andrew Blum: Chapter Summary

Most people don’t know what the internet really is. In his book Tubes: a journey to the center on the internet, Andrew Blum goes all around the world to finally put an answer to the question. Blum acknowledges how we are becoming a more internet dependent society, and questions why the world inside the screen seemed to have no physical reality. Blum battles the public’s conception of the internet as a “nebulous electronic solar system, a cosmic cloud” (Blum 6). The internet is not some ethereal concept lurking behind our computer screens, but a collection of wires and computer. The premise of Tubes is to reveal that “when you pull back the curtain, the networks of the Internet are as fixed in real, physical places as any railroad or telephone …show more content…
Blum tries to solve this challenge by connecting the screen and our world by bringing the internet into the world’s physical realm. Blum hopes for with more connections and an open understanding of what the internet is.
There is no way I can disagree with the physical evidence Blum provides to show that the internet is not a glowing blob, but a series of tubes. Before this book I too thought of the internet as something you can’t touch. I assumed the wires from my house went to some place nearby and then traveled wirelessly around the world. Blum accomplishes his goal to show the reader the internet is tangible. However I don’t think my new understanding of the internet has changed my relationship with the screen and the world. I disagree with Blum’s idea that we face some sort of challenge because we don’t see the internet as tangible. A digital native can use the internet to “reinvent herself many times over without leaving her room, and she can explore her identity’s simultaneously” (Palfrey and Gasser 20). She may think of the internet as a “cosmic cloud” but her online identities are no less real to her than the identity she has a school. I believe Blum is unnecessarily